DESCRIPTION

The syscons driver provides multiple virtual terminals. It resembles the
SCO color console driver.
The syscons driver is implemented on top of the keyboard driver
(atkbd(4)) and the video card driver (vga(4)) and so requires both of
them to be configured in the system.
There can be only one syscons device defined in the system.
VirtualTerminals
The syscons driver provides multiple virtual terminals which appear as if
they were separate terminals. One virtual terminal is considered current
and exclusively occupies the screen and the keyboard; the other virtual
terminals are placed in the background.
In order to use virtual terminals, they must be individually marked
‘‘on’’ in /etc/ttys so that getty(8) will recognize them to be active and
run login(1) to let the user log in to the system. By default, only the
first eight virtual terminals are activated in /etc/ttys.
You press the Alt key and a switch key to switch between virtual
terminals. The following table summarizes the correspondence between the
switch key and the virtual terminal.
Alt-F1 ttyv0 Alt-F7 ttyv6 Shift-Alt-F1 ttyva
Alt-F2 ttyv1 Alt-F8 ttyv7 Shift-Alt-F2 ttyvb
Alt-F3 ttyv2 Alt-F9 ttyv8 Shift-Alt-F3 ttyvc
Alt-F4 ttyv3 Alt-F10 ttyv9 Shift-Alt-F4 ttyvd
Alt-F5 ttyv4 Alt-F11 ttyva Shift-Alt-F5 ttyve
Alt-F6 ttyv5 Alt-F12 ttyvb Shift-Alt-F6 ttyvf
You can also use the ‘‘nscr’’ key (usually the PrintScreen key on the AT
Enhanced keyboard) to cycle available virtual terminals.
The default number of available virtual terminals is 16. This can be
changed with the kernel configuration option MAXCONS (see below).
Note that the X server usually requires a virtual terminal for display
purposes, so at least one terminal must be left unused by getty(8) so
that it can be used by the X server.
KeyDefinitionsandFunctionKeyStrings
The syscons driver, in conjunction with the keyboard driver, allows the
user to change key definitions and function key strings. The
kbdcontrol(1) command will load a key definition file (known as
‘‘keymap’’ file), dump the current keymap, and assign a string to a
function key. See keyboard(4) and kbdmap(5) for the keymap file.
You may want to set the keymap variable in /etc/rc.conf.local to the
desired keymap file so that it will be automatically loaded when the
system starts up.
SoftwareFont
For most modern video cards, e.g., VGA, the syscons driver and the video
card driver allow the user to change the font used on the screen. The
vidcontrol(1) command can be used to load a font file from
/usr/share/syscons/fonts.
The font comes in various sizes: 8x8, 8x14 and 8x16. The 8x16 font is
typically used for the VGA card in the 80-column-by-25-line mode. Other
video modes may require different font sizes. It is better to always
load all three sizes of the same font.
You may set font8x8, font8x14 and font8x16 variables in /etc/rc.conf to
the desired font files so that they will be automatically loaded when the
system starts up.
Optionally you can specify a particular font file as the default. See
the SC_DFLT_FONT option below.
ScreenMap
If your video card does not support software fonts, you may still be able
to achieve a similar effect by re-mapping the font built into your video
card. Use vidcontrol(1) to load a screen map file which defines the
mapping between character codes.
MouseSupportandCopy-and-Paste
You can use your mouse to copy text on the screen and paste it as if it
was typed by hand. You must be running the mouse daemon moused(8) and
enable the mouse cursor in the virtual terminal via vidcontrol(1).
Pressing mouse button 1 (usually the left button) will start selection.
Releasing button 1 will end the selection process. The selected text
will be marked by inverting foreground and background colors. You can
press button 3 (usually the right button) to extend the selected region.
The selected text is placed in the copy buffer and can be pasted at the
cursor position by pressing button 2 (usually the middle button) as many
times as you like.
If your mouse has only two buttons, you may want to use the
SC_TWOBUTTON_MOUSE option below to make the right button to paste the
text. Alternatively you can make the mouse daemon emulate the middle
button. See the man page for moused(8) for more details.
BackScrolling
The syscons driver allows the user to browse the output which has
‘‘scrolled off’’ the top of the screen.
Press the ‘‘slock’’ key (usually ScrllLock / Scroll Lock or Pause on many
keyboards) and the terminal is in the ‘‘scrollback’’ mode. It is
indicated by the Scroll Lock LED. Use the arrow keys, the Page Up/Down
keys and the Home/End keys to scroll buffered terminal output. Press the
‘‘slock’’ key again to get back to the normal terminal mode.
The size of the scrollback buffer can be set by the SC_HISTORY_SIZE
option described below.
ScreenSaver
The syscons driver can be made to put up the screen saver if the current
virtual terminal is idle, that is, the user is not typing on the keyboard
nor moving the mouse. See splash(4) and vidcontrol(1) for more details.

DRIVERCONFIGURATION

KernelConfigurationOptions
The following kernel configuration options control the syscons driver.
MAXCONS=N
This option sets the number of virtual terminals to N. The
default value is 16.
SC_ALT_MOUSE_IMAGE
This option selects the alternative way of displaying the mouse
cursor in the virtual terminal. It may be expensive for some
video cards to draw the arrow-shaped cursor, and you may want to
try this option. However, the appearance of the alternative mouse
cursor may not be very appealing. Note that if you use the
SC_NO_FONT_LOADING option then you must also use this option if
you wish to be able to use the mouse.
SC_CUT_SEPCHARS=_characters_
This options specifies characters that will be looked for when the
driver searches for words boundaries when doing cut operation. By
default, its value is "\x20" — a space character.
SC_CUT_SPACES2TABS
This options instructs the driver to convert leading spaces into
tabs when copying data into cut buffer. This might be useful to
preserve indentation when copying tab-indented text.
SC_DISABLE_KDBKEY
This option disables the ‘‘debug’’ key combination (by default, it
is Alt-Esc, or Ctl-PrintScreen). It will prevent users from
entering the kernel debugger (KDB) by pressing the key
combination. KDB will still be invoked when the kernel panics or
hits a break point if it is included in the kernel. If this
option is not defined, this behavior may be controlled at runtime
by the sysctl(8) variable hw.syscons.kbd_debug.
SC_DISABLE_REBOOT
This option disables the ‘‘reboot’’ key (by default, it is
Ctl-Alt-Del), so that the casual user may not accidentally reboot
the system. If this option is not defined, this behavior may be
controlled at runtime by the sysctl(8) variable
hw.syscons.kbd_reboot.
SC_HISTORY_SIZE=N
Sets the size of back scroll buffer to N lines. The default value
is 100.
SC_MOUSE_CHAR=C
Unless the SC_ALT_MOUSE_IMAGE option above is specified, the
syscons driver reserves four consecutive character codes in order
to display the mouse cursor in the virtual terminals in some
systems. This option specifies the first character code to C to
be used for this purpose. The default value is 0xd0. A good
candidate is 0x03.
SC_PIXEL_MODE
Adds support for pixel (raster) mode console. This mode is useful
on some laptop computers, but less so on most other systems, and
it adds substantial amount of code to syscons. If this option is
NOT defined, you can reduce the kernel size a lot. See the
VESA800X600 flag below.
SC_TWOBUTTON_MOUSE
If you have a two button mouse, you may want to add this option to
use the right button of the mouse to paste text. See MouseSupportandCopy-and-Paste above.
SC_NORM_ATTR=_attribute_
SC_NORM_REV_ATTR=_attribute_
SC_KERNEL_CONS_ATTR=_attribute_
SC_KERNEL_CONS_REV_ATTR=_attribute_
These options will set the default colors. Available colors are
defined in See EXAMPLES below.
SC_DFLT_FONT
This option will specify the default font. Available fonts are:
iso, iso2, koi8-r, koi8-u, cp437, cp850, cp865, cp866 and cp866u.
16-line, 14-line and 8-line font data will be compiled in.
Without this option, the syscons driver will use whatever font is
already loaded in the video card, unless you explicitly load a
software font at startup. See EXAMPLES below.
SC_NO_SUSPEND_VTYSWITCH
This option, which is also available as loader(8) tunable and
sysctl(8) variable hw.syscons.sc_no_suspend_vtswitch, disables
switching between virtual terminals (graphics <-> text) during
suspend/resume (ACPI and APM). Use this option if your system is
freezing when you are running X and trying to suspend.
The following options will remove some features from the syscons driver
and save kernel memory.
SC_NO_CUTPASTE
This option disables ‘‘copy and paste’’ operation in virtual
terminals.
SC_NO_FONT_LOADING
The syscons driver can load software fonts on some video cards.
This option removes this feature. Note that if you still wish to
use the mouse with this option then you must also use the
SC_ALT_MOUSE_IMAGE option.
SC_NO_HISTORY
This option disables back-scrolling in virtual terminals.
SC_NO_SYSMOUSE
This option removes mouse support in the syscons driver. The
mouse daemon moused(8) will fail if this option is defined. This
option implies the SC_NO_CUTPASTE option too.
DriverFlags
The following driver flags can be used to control the syscons driver.
They can be set either in /boot/device.hints, or else at the loader
prompt (see loader(8)).
0x0080 (VESA800X600)
This option puts the video card in the VESA 800x600 pixel, 16
color mode. It may be useful for laptop computers for which the
800x600 mode is otherwise unsupported by the X server. Note that
in order for this flag to work, the kernel must be compiled with
the SC_PIXEL_MODE option explained above.
0x0100 (AUTODETECT_KBD)
This option instructs the syscons driver to periodically scan for
a keyboard device if it is not currently attached to one.
Otherwise, the driver only probes for a keyboard once during
bootup.

EXAMPLES

As the syscons driver requires the keyboard driver and the video card
driver, the kernel configuration file should contain the following lines.
device atkbdc
device atkbd
device vga
device sc
device splash
You also need the following lines in /boot/device.hints for these
drivers.
hint.atkbdc.0.at="isa"
hint.atkbdc.0.port="0x060"
hint.atkbd.0.at="atkbdc"
hint.atkbd.0.irq="1"
hint.vga.0.at="isa"
hint.sc.0.at="isa"
If you do not intend to load the splash image or use the screen saver,
the last line is not necessary, and can be omitted.
Note that the keyboard controller driver atkbdc is required by the
keyboard driver atkbd.
The following lines will set the default colors. The normal text will be
green on black background. The reversed text will be yellow on green
background. Note that you cannot put any white space inside the quoted
string, because of the current implementation of config(8).
options SC_NORM_ATTR=(FG_GREEN|BG_BLACK)
options SC_NORM_REV_ATTR=(FG_YELLOW|BG_GREEN)
The following lines will set the default colors of the kernel message.
The kernel message will be printed bright red on black background. The
reversed message will be black on red background.
options SC_KERNEL_CONS_ATTR=(FG_LIGHTRED|BG_BLACK)
options SC_KERNEL_CONS_REV_ATTR=(FG_BLACK|BG_RED)
The following example adds the font files cp850-8x16.fnt, cp850-8x14.font
and cp850-8x8.font to the kernel.
options SC_DFLT_FONT
makeoptions SC_DFLT_FONT=cp850
device sc

CAVEATS

The amount of data that is possible to insert from the cut buffer is
limited by the {MAX_INPUT}, a system limit on the number of bytes that
may be stored in the terminal input queue - usually 1024 bytes (see
termios(4)).